Evey: Event Registration Platform [Review]

Evey is an online event ticketing platform with a focus on design and customization. Here is the review.

Evey was born because a design focused Event Planner was looking for more from a ticketing and registration platform when planning his own conference. Frustrated by online event pages and tickets which lacked design customization, coupled with high registration fees and slow payment terms Eveys Co-Founder, Levin Mejia, decided to do something about it.

Following discussions with a Developer friend they decided to tackle this gap in the market with their core market focus being Event Planners with a passion for design and user experience.

Evey: What is It?

Evey is an online registration tool with a low pricing model and capability for customized design.

Some of the main features of Evey include:

Evey offers a simple registration solution with registration and check out taking place on a single page, with no time limits or countdown timers. Tickets are sold individually or via group ticket sales and you can add custom question fields and collect the data that you need from your attendees. You can edit the automatic confirmation email sent on booking and add discount codes.

Customisation of Design. Evey offers some templates to choose from but it also allows you the opportunity to customize the code exactly as you wish. Full customization extends right from event page to PDF and iOS Passbook tickets. Event pages and PDF tickets can be designed in HTML, CSS, and images to match your event. For iOS Passbook tickets you can use a custom design tool.

Fast Payments and Simple Pricing. With Evey free events are free. Paying events are charged at a monthly fee of $29 per month, regardless of whether you sell 100 or 1,000 tickets and there is just the card gateway fee to pay per ticket. The gateway preferred by Evey is Stripe which can even have the funds into your account within one working day in some cases.

You can use the Evey features via a Shopify account too, which is only charged at $20 per month, although you lose some of the customization features available with a full Evey account.

Simple Reporting. The dashboard offers a simple overview of registrations (bookings activity and revenue) in a graph format and exporting of attendee data via CSV or XLS.

Mail Chimp Integration. Evey integrates with Mail Chimp, meaning that once set up every registration for your event is automatically populated into your email list so you don’t need to worry about importing data or missing anyone off the list before sending out your next newsletter.

Onsite Check In. Evey offers several options to check in attendees. You can accept printed tickets, scan QR codes or search for attendees from a phone, tablet, or manually check against an attendee list. Check-in tools are via a responsive web app that works with all the leading smart phones and tablets.

Review

For many the biggest selling feature of Evey initially will be the pricing structure as the simple fee structure could potentially save Event Planners hundreds or thousands of dollars in event booking charges. Not only that, with Evey you see the funds virtually immediately, rather than waiting weeks or months for the payout.

Another differentiating feature of Evey is that they actually share the HTML code of the site with you and encourage you to modify it. It is easy to remove the Evey logo branding and make other modifications as you chose with just a simple grasp of coding. Evey want you to make their platform your own. During the demo we saw some examples of customized sites branded by clients to their exact design specifications.

You can preview your ticketing page at any point and you can even customize the map zoom level. A big plus is that you can choose a layout and customization for your printed event ticket too. When registered, your attendee can download a PDF ticket or a iOS passbook ticket for their mobile device.

The dashboard is easy to navigate and your event is quick to set up. If you chose to use the standard templates your event could easily be online within 5 or 10 minutes and it walks you through the process.

Evey is focused on the ticketing and registration process. It is not looking to be an all in one event or project management solution so if you are looking for a suite of add ons such as to-do lists and budgets this is not the package for you.

The design of the site is very simple, bordering on basic, but also clean and minimal. If you don’t want to customize there are only a limited number (2) themes available at this time however these have a few different colour options for each and more themes will be available soon. The design is focused on a modern visual based on the user adding a suitable large image.

Evey is focused on getting the booking and payment details first, the attendee details can be updated afterwards. The single page checkout is transparent and shows the speed of the registration process to the person booking. For most this will be a plus however if someone is unsure about making the booking having to enter payment details first may be a barrier. Plus there will always be a small number of attendees that never update their attendee details after booking, despite chasing!

Currently the site doesn’t offer a VAT/Tax receipt breakdown so if this is something you need Evey may not be the product for you. There are ways to work around this by noting the VAT/Tax amount into the ticket type and noting the tax number in the confirmation message but if you have a lot of corporate registrations or a finicky accountant this may not suffice.

You can instruct the platform to send you a daily activity report with an update of how many tickets you have sold. Unlimited team members can join the platform to manage bookings and also handle check in effectively at no additional charge. You can also insert Google Analytics code into your registration page to gain more sophisticated data about your event.

Features

Here is a quick overview of some of the main features.

Online Registration
– Custom URL for your event
– Responsive to work with any device or smartphone
– Social network integration
– Customizable email templates
– Event groups
– Multiple ticket types
– Multiple themes
– Liquid based theming
– Discount codes

Customisation of Design
– Event pages and checkout
– PDF tickets with HTML/CSS
– iOS Passbook tickets
– Page themes

Fast Payments and Simple Pricing
– Get your funds quickly so you can use them where you need them
– Shopify App – for those who would like to sell event tickets alongside their existing products and services

Simple Reporting
– CSV import/export
– Team collaboration – there is no additional cost for multiple team members to use Evey
– Email support
– Event analytics
– Mail Chimp integration

Onsite Check In
– Check-in app to check-in users

Who Is It For?

Evey is for any Event Planner that wants a cost effective paid ticketing solution and positive cash flow. It will appeal to anyone currently paying high booking fees to their registration provider.

Event Managers with design and coding skills, or access to these skills within their team, will also particularly benefit.

The system currently doesn’t offer some of the more sophisticated features incorporated into the larger competitors platforms such as conditional logic and repeat events so it may not be the best match for complex event projects but it currently offers enough for the majority of conferences, workshops and seminars. The simple and straightforward registration portal is designed to be focused and encourage bookings, rather than asking for unnecessary information which may mean the booking is abandoned. Evey has been designed with simplicity and efficiency in mind.

Pros and Cons

Pros
– Simple and affordable pricing structure eliminating per ticket booking fees and fast access to funds – sometimes within one business day
– Stylish, minimal interface, event pages and tickets. Evey is responsive so people can view and book from any device – smartphone, tablet or desktop
– Easy customization of event pages and tickets to reflect your brand

Cons
– Some features are still in development such as the recurring event feature, seating chart functionality and native check in apps for iOS and Android. If you want an “off the peg” theme without customizing it yourself there are limited theme options available, but more are in development.
– The registration form may be too simplistic for really complex events, for example if conditional logic is required or the receipt VAT/Tax breakdown is not sufficient
– The social sharing options could be improved to help attendees help you to market the event and push further registrations

Prices and Plans

Evey: $29 per event/month*

Shopify App: $20 per event/month*

* No per ticket fees or surcharges

Evey only collects a single monthly rate. Merchant fees for Stripe and Shopify payment gateways are additional to the price.

For example Stripe charges 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction. Other currencies are supported.

Further discounts are available for charity and not-for profit events.

In Conclusion

Evey is focused on simplicity, customization and low cost for the event registration market.

The system is well thought through with benefits that Event Planners will find hard to ignore if design and value is important to them.

Over 1.5 million tickets have already been delivered via Evey, including for some major organizations such as Caltech University and The Oatmeal.

Evey can offer substantial savings in time and money, which any Event Planner can better invest elsewhere.

We are watching with interest how Evey develops. Watch this space!

Disclosure: Startup Reviews are paid for placements. While Event Manager Blog receives a fee to extensively look at the tool and review it in detail, the content of the review is independent and by no means influenced by the startup. If you have any question please use the contact us section.